The Death of Aerith

The creators of Final Fantasy VII reflect on one of gaming’s most emotionally charged moments

In early 1997, Square wrapped its work on the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VII. The team had seen Sakaguchi’s ideas through, producing a expansive game with best-in-class visuals, and affirmed the PlayStation as a formidable new platform. Yet the team had a secret. A spoiler. Toward the end of the game’s first disc, villain Sephiroth stabs one of the main characters, Aerith Gainsborough, through the back, killing her. Looking back, many point out that the scene appears almost comically primitive, with blocky characters and limited animation. But at the time, it stood out as one of the most emotionally charged moments the game industry had produced – a moment that stuck with fans for years. It even made some players cry.

Tetsuya NomuraCharacter and battle visual director, Square Japan Did you know people have been coming up to me for years now and saying, ‘You killed Aerith!’?

Tetsuya Nomura Character and battle visual director, Square Japan OK, so maybe I did kill Aerith. But if I hadn’t stopped you, in the second half of the game, you were planning to kill everyone off but the final three characters the player chooses!

Yoshinori Kitase Director, Square Japan No way! I wrote that? Where?

Tetsuya Nomura Character and battle visual director, Square Japan In the scene where they parachute into Midgar. You wanted everyone to die there!

Tetsuya Nomura Character and battle visual director, Square Japan Yeah, remember? You and [writer Kazushige] Nojima-san were all excited about this. I was the one who said ‘No way!’ and stopped you guys. You wanted to kill everyone except the final three characters the player chose for the endgame.

One day, toward the end of development, I visited him to ask [Uematsu-san], ‘Do you think we did the right thing in killing Aerith?’

Kazushige Nojima Scenario writer, Square Japan Obviously, I’m a scenario writer so I wrote the script where Aerith dies. But, for that decision, we talked it through with the main staff. We talked a lot about how the story would turn out.

Tetsuya Nomura Character and battle visual director, Square Japan The theme of Final Fantasy VII was ‘life,’ and we sacrificed Aerith in order to give weight and depth to that theme. Her death is a tragedy but, if we suddenly just killed off everyone else after that, it would dilute the meaning of her death.

Kazushige Nojima Scenario writer, Square Japan Back then it was so much easier to change the scenario on the fly. So every day, we’d go back and forth about how to approach things.

Tetsuya Nomura Character and battle visual director, Square Japan Long after we made the decision to kill Aerith and the development had progressed considerably, I used to go visit Uematsu-san in his room. Just to hang out and talk about random things. One day, toward the end of development, I visited him to ask him, ‘Do you think we did the right thing in killing Aerith?’

Tetsuya Nomura Character and battle visual director, Square Japan I was relieved to hear it.

With ‘life’ as our theme for Final Fantasy VII, I thought we should try depicting a character who really dies for good, who can’t come back. For that death to resonate, it needed to be an important character.

Nobuo Uematsu Music composer, Square Japan When I was playing the game, I was really surprised when she died so early on. Everybody probably thought she was going to be one of the main popular characters, but then she just died right away. Maybe that’s the reason why everyone remembers it so much.

Tetsuya Nomura Character and battle visual director, Square Japan When a character in a videogame dies, no one thinks it’s that sad. They’re just characters in a game, after all – you can just reset the game and try again, or you can always revive them somehow. I felt that their lives just didn’t have much weight. With ‘life’ as our theme for FFVII, I thought we should try depicting a character who really dies for good, who can’t come back. For that death to resonate, it needed to be an important character. So we thought killing off the heroine would allow players to think more deeply about that theme.

Nobuo Uematsu Music composer, Square Japan When I was composing [the music that played when Aerith died], I didn’t really think about her death, but I felt like she wasn’t a very happy character. She was really innocent and pure, but had a tragic kind of life … I did realise it was probably going to be an important track … If I had known that scene would make people cry, I might have made something totally different – something designed to make you cry. But I went with a kind of sad but beautiful tune, and since it’s not the kind of track you typically hear when something tragic happens, maybe that worked out well. When something is missing, people tend to use their imaginations. So since the track doesn’t express 100 percent of the feeling in that moment, people might have filled in the gaps in their heads. Maybe.

Tetsuya Nomura Character and battle visual director, Square Japan [It wasn’t my goal to make people cry with that scene.] It was more wanting people to understand what it means to hurt and to feel a sense of loss.

Written byMatt Leone

Twenty-five years ago, Matt Leone couldn’t think of anything better to pad out his birthday thank you notes, so he filled them with Mortal Kombat II facts and has been writing about games ever since. Currently, he’s an editor at Polygon, working with freelancers and reporting on behind the scenes aspects of the game industry. Every now and then, he even pops up on Twitter @LattMeone.